PPF Media, a.s., a unit of the Czech Republic-based insurance and banking conglomerate, was pioneering a new form of "hyperlocal" journalism based on websites in small cities and large towns, supported by regional weeklies, and a national desk in Prague called Futuroom -- and coffee shops. But is the idea being shuttered?

As the decline of newspapers is felt throughout the country, could community media & technology centers be the new model for local news? Could Citizen Journalism be an opportunity for community media centers like PEGs to earn income, create trained citizen reporters, build partnerships, and serve up local content?

A discussion from Aug. 12, 2009, between and among Bill Densmore and Norm Sims of the Media Giraffe Project, and Connor White-Sullivan, founder of the startup Localocracy.com in Amherst, Mass. Click on the carat to the left of the bar below to launch streaming audio, or download an MP3 podcast for offline listening. (23 mins., 41 secs. / 5.7MB)

Here, David Mastio talks about BlogNetNews, the blog aggregator that he founded. This fifteen-minute interview was conducted by MGP's Sara Majka. Talk focuses on his efforts to get newspapers to have a section for local blogs. He feels it's a natural partnership---and he's invested retirement money in trying to get it off the ground---but he's had trouble getting newspapers to warm to the idea. A few weeks ago his partnership with the Miami Herald got off the ground, and he hopes interest will increase.

We've added a new MGP video to our archive (watch it above, or click here to see it full-sized). When some 100 journalists, technologists, academics and citizens gathered March 1-4, 2009 at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg,

In this ten minute interview, MGP's Sara Majka talks to Tracy Van Slyke from The Media Consortium, a network for progressive news organizations. She's the program director and first full-time paid employee. Here, she talks about how the group started in 2005, when a few magazines, including Mother Jones and The American Prospect, started talking, and how it coalesced into an active, dues-paying organization.

In this 16-minute interview, ProPublica's editor-in-chief, Paul Steiger, is interviewed by MGP's Sara Majka. You can learn more about Steiger and ProPublica, including a piece written about the interview and list of follow-up links, by going to his MGP profile.

MGP's Sara Majka interviews Michael Tippett from the "crowd-powered" website NowPublic in 2008. In this thirty minute interview, Tippett gives a behind the scenes look at the early stages of citizen journalism.